An official of a commission of the Bundestag, the lower house of the West German Parliament, said today that the question of whether extremist pamphlets and newspapers published in West Germany could be prosecuted was now under examination.
His statement followed publication of an Interior Ministry report showing that there had been a slight increase in right-wing forces in West Germany in 1965 and a considerable rise in the circulation of rightist newspapers, some of them outright anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.
H. Schmitt-Vockenhausen, chairman of the Bundestag Commission of the Interior, also said that he felt that the extreme right-wing organizations were not an “acute danger” to the constitutional order of the federal republic. He added he had found no evidence of a general trend toward extremism among refugee and expellee organizations.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Cologne said that nearly half of the reported extremists belong to the National Democratic Party. Interior Minister Paul Lueker referred to the party in his report without naming it. He said it attempts to adapt itself outwardly to changing political conditions of the postwar generation and now no longer was openly promoting Nazi ideas.
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